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Archive for the ‘Columbia Mall’ tag

I noticed the other week that this fabric and sewing supply store in what is more or less a Columbia Mall outparcel is closing. I have not been in a fabric store in decades, but I remember very well that when my mother used to take us shopping and we went into one, they air would be so heavy with dye fumes from all the bolts of cloth that our eyes would start to water almost immediately.

The chain website says that there is a nother Columbia store in Harbison.

This former bingo hall is in the strip on Two notch which backs up againgst the original Best Buy and has stoplight access at the Columbia Mall perimeter road. Interestingly, Best Buy itself has no access to this stoplight. It always surprised me a little that they didn't negotiate some sort of cut through for that..

However, LoopNet says the current building wasn't built until 2005, so there must have been an older structure there at one time. (This would have been the Pink House era on Shakespeare). I don't know what the property was used for in the interim, but the last tenant was Heritage Elictrical, which has apprently moved to Elgin.

At one time this corner storefrong in Capitol Centre was one of my favorite restaurants Cucos Mexican Cafe. I believe it's been more since then than the two businesses I currently have on the post title, C & V's Sports Cafe and Elements, but that's all that google is coming up with for me now.

Anyway, I noticed on my last drive through that it is empty again, and is due shortly to become a Bingo hall.

I noticed this evening as I was driving by Columbia Mall that there were no cars visible in the outparcel parking lot of Caprioska (the old O'Charleys / Sticky Fingers location). For a Friday evening, that seemed odd, so I turned in.

Taking a tour of the parking lot revealed that the place is open, but as Brickhouse, not Caprioska.

When commenter badger mentioned that the Columbia Mall outparcel Bakers Sports Pub & Grill appeared to be closed, I thought I might run over there after work to take a look. I certainly did not expect what I found.

On the east side of the building, things looked almost normal, but I noticed as I walked over from my car to the front door that part of the entrance was boarded over. Then I just figured that this was not a business related closing, but that probably they had had a fire. Looking in through the door though, there were no burned sections, just a lot of devastation.

Then I got off the porch and noticed the crime scene tape around the front and west side of the building. Then, walking around (outside the tape boundry..) I saw this:

Once home, a bit of googling established that it was exactly what it looked like -- someone had driven a pickup truck into the west side of the building. And furthermore, it was part of a police chase that saw the truck drive through *another* building, run over one suspect and leave the other suspect (the driver) shot dead by police. It's a pretty incredible story, and in fact I had glanced through it last week without making the connection with Bakers.

The State has a dramatic picture of the pickup truck after it hit the wall.